lor of the Exchequer who ever made
the Budget interesting. "He talked shop," it was said, "like a tenth
muse." He could apply all the resources of a glowing rhetoric to the
most prosaic questions of cost and profit; could make beer romantic and
sugar serious. He could sweep the widest horizon of the financial
future, and yet stoop to bestow the minutest attention on the microcosm
of penny stamps and the monetary merits of half-farthings. And yet,
extraordinary as were these feats of intellectual athletics, Mr.
Gladstone's unapproached supremacy as an orator was not really seen
until he touched the moral elements involved in some great political
issue. Then, indeed, he spoke like a prophet and a man inspired. His
whole physical formation seemed to become "fusile" with the fire of his
ethical passion, and his eloquence flowed like a stream of molten lava,
carrying all before it in its irresistible rush, glorious as well as
terrible, and fertilizing while it subdued. Mr. Gladstone's departure
from the House of Commons closed a splendid tradition, and Parliamentary
Oratory as our fathers understood it may now be reckoned among the lost
arts.

XIII.

CONVERSATION.

We have agreed that Parliamentary Oratory, as our fathers understood
that phrase, is a lost art. Must Conversation be included in the same
category? To answer with positiveness is difficult; but this much may be
readily conceded--that a belief in the decadence of conversation is
natural to those who have specially cultivated Links with the Past; who
grew up in the traditions of Luttrell and Mackintosh, and Lord Alvanley
and Samuel Rogers; who have felt Sydney Smith's irresistible fun, and
known the overwhelming fullness of Lord Macaulay. It is not unreasonable
even in that later generation which can still recall the frank but
high-bred gaiety of the great Lord Derby, the rollicking good-humour and
animal spirits of Bishop Wilberforce, the saturnine epigrams of Lord
Beaconsfield, the versatility and choice diction of Lord Houghton, the
many-sided yet concentrated malice which supplied the stock in trade of
Abraham Hayward. More recent losses have been heavier still. Just ten
years ago[15] died Mr. Matthew Arnold, who combined in singular harmony
the various elements which go to make good conversation--urbanity,
liveliness, quick sympathy, keen interest in the world's works and ways,
the happiest choice of words, and a natural and never-failing humour, as